Interviwe with Qazi Abdur Rahim

As a specialized director in the genre of documentaries since 2008 and I started because I needed images due to, I work in the performing arts, I needed images about women that had been suffered gender violence that were part of this documental-theatre that I was doing. 

Then little by little I realized that those images had a lot of importance and that is why I turned them into a documentary that was successful, and that people liked. That is how I started on this road, as I had studies on literary theory, on narrative, my personal training in theater, the only thing that was needed to start this way was to train technically, and that is what it has said since 2008.

I believe that the only option there is, or one of the only options that seems to me as a creative woman, is to have a gender vision. Otherwise, it would be contradictory to want to denounce realities, which is what I try with my documentaries, that affect other people such as migration or functional diversity and not do it from a gender perspective since I understand that women are unequal.

So, the gender perspective always appears in a transversal way as a creative woman that I am. And I think it affects positively because it is a struggle that is still latent that we must continue to denounce and give visibility.

• 3. Tell us a little about the new project you are developing: "Breathe"

IIt is a project that I have shot in the women's prison that will finally be able to premiere this year in the official section of the “Seminci” and now we are in search of the premiere web, it will also be broadcast on TV3 television here in Catalonia.

It is a project that was born in 2018, a project that has been very difficult to manage because never getting in jail is easy, plus the pandemic has caught us in the middle of the assembly and because talking about such sensitive issues is not easy from many perspectives, such as legal perspectives and the repercusions that can be around this subject. And it was possible to finance it because in the beginning the “Verkami” campaign help us, even though later we have found collaborators in the world of culture, from “Generalitat of Catalonia”, even the department of justice or TV3. However, the beginning was a need to give voice to the women in a project.

I believe that this sector lacks the same that society is missing, I mean, it is a micro reflection of what society does not have. This has to do with putting in value the professionalism of women, there must be equality in the work and in salaries and that we are not relegated only to administrative jobs since there are technical women, female directors, etc. But from the point of view that always the Oscars have been in operation and in this last contest a woman has won "Best Direction", it is “a new” since it is the second in her entire career, well imagine what we have left to do. 

How many editions are there of the Oscars? I honestly do not know, 60? 70? And there are only two women, imagine.

I believe that a woman can contribute the same as a man. This has to do with the sensitivity of each person, no two men contribute the same nor are there two women who contribute the same.

Surely as women, we are always relegated to secondary roles, and I do not mean that it has to do with characters that develop, when we give them opportunities because I imagine they will have a lot of enthusiasm if they are valued in the same way as men.

Because if you give it a chance, but it is a false opportunity because for doing the same it charges less, because it will be bitten.

Because if you give her a chance, it is a false opportunity because she is going to do the same, but she is going to receive less salary and she is going to be fucked up. 

• 6. What directors have inspired you and why?

The directors who have inspired me as a director are very similar to those who have inspired me to be an actress. When I was a teenager and I read Krzysztof Kieślowski's trilogy: Blue, White, and Red, and the poetics from which he spoke seemed wonderful to me. But it has also been a great influence due to the harshness with which Lars von Trier speaks and all the dogma cinema or the cinema de la variété with Godard or from a more denouncing point of view; Spake Lee, this has more to do with documentaries or Jim Jarmusch, these have been my references.

• 7. And finally, what would you like to say to women managers and producers?